Wednesday, 24 September 2014

Chumar stand-off: China asks for border meeting; army plays it cool

Xi’s
mention to PLA of “regional war” only affirms official doctrine

By Ajai
Shukla

Business Standard, 24th Sept 14

China’s People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) has requested a flag meeting to resolve the border
confrontation at Chumar, in southern Ladakh. The contest, which has been
running for a week, now has over a thousand armed troops facing off at three
separate spots, with neither side willing to allow the other to move deeper
into territory that each claims as its own.

Top army
generals say they are in no hurry to accede to the Chinese request. They say
they are “evaluating the agenda” and will respond in due course.

Chumar has emerged
as a hotly disputed segment of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India
and China. Here, both sides perceive the LAC differently, with a difference of
3-4 kilometres between the two claims. India has a road almost up to its claim
line while, until this year, Chinese troops had to walk several kilometres to
reach the LAC. That allowed Indian patrols to dominate the LAC, while the Chinese
patrolled less frequently and aggressively.

Over the
last two years, however, China too has connected up a new road to the LAC,
leading to more vigorous patrolling. A face-off like the current one, say local
Indian commanders, was inevitable.

Chumar is
one of 14 identified hot spots, where India and China perceive the LAC
differently. The other locations that have seen trouble in the past include the
Thagla Ridge/Namka Chu Valley (where the 1962 war began), the Thangdrong
Ridgeline (which saw a major Chinese incursion in 1986), and Daulet Beg Oldi,
where the Chinese set up camp last April.

Indian
commanders in the Leh-headquartered 14 Corps, however, are sanguine that this
confrontation, like every other in the last four decades, will be resolved
through discussions. “The Chinese are making the point that this area remains
disputed”, says one general. “They absolutely don’t want a shooting war.”

Yet, Indian
analysts have made much of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s exhortation to PLA
commanders, at a meeting in Beijing on Sept 22, to be ready “to win a regional
war in the age of information technology.” Commentators have interpreted Xi’s
mention of “a regional war” as a direct threat to India.

In fact, Xi
is articulating a two-decade-old PLA strategic doctrine that, at the end of the
Cold War, jettisoned the threat of the “early, major and nuclear war”, that Mao
had foreseen. In 1985, China’s Central Military Commission (then led by Deng
Xiao-ping and today by Xi Jinping) declared that the PLA’s most likely threat
was “local, limited war”.This allowed
Deng to dramatically downsize the bloated, 4 million-strong PLA.

In January
1993, after the globally televised US military wizardry of the First Gulf War,
Jiang Zemin issued a new set of “Military Strategic Guidelines”, which shifted
focus to fighting “local wars under modern high-technology conditions”.

The “local
war” that Jiang explicitly defined was to “prevent Taiwan from fomenting any
great ‘Taiwan independence’ incidents.” This came to be known as the PLA’s
“main strategic direction”.

A decade
ago, in the early 2000s, a technologically evolving PLA modified its strategy further
to “local war under conditions of informatization.” Here again, Taiwan remained
the likely objective, with India barely mentioned in PLA literature.

On Sunday, Xi
also urged the PLA to show “absolute loyalty and firm faith in the Communist
Party of China… (to) make sure all decisions from the central leadership are
fully implemented,” says the official website of China’s Ministry of National
Defence.

This may
have been a mere affirmation of the Communist Party of China’s bedrock
principle of tight control over the military. In Yan’an in 1938, Mao had
written, “The party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to
command the party.” Every top Chinese leader since Mao has reaffirmed this
principle periodically; Xi might have been doing the same.

However,
the Chumar face-off at a politically sensitive time might also reflect the
PLA’s growing autonomy and clout in Xinjiang and Tibet, which includes the
management of the LAC. China watchers are closely observing the relationship
for signs that Xi’s iron grip over China might not include the security
establishment in its roiling western provinces.

Postscript: China's foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, on Tuesday denied that Xi's remarks about "regional war" were aimed at India. Replying to a question about whether his remarks were related to the border standoff, Hua said, "I believe that this may be a wild guess... (that was) completely off the mark."

4 comments:

It is noteworthy that the line in dispute is not the international border between the two countries but the line of control. In the 1950, the differences with China were regarding the demarcation of the international border.

If there is a silver lining its that at least we dont get to see the kind of beheadings that happen on our western front. There is still hope that the two asian giants can resolve their disputes peacefully notwithstanding the almost funny standoffs inviolving troops pushing each other.